Friday, August 22, 2014

Commenters point out that, if Revere’s current stats hold up, he will join only two other post-1900 players with lower wOBA than BA, and 49 others with a 2.1% or lower walk rate.

To look for players to compare to [Ben] Revere historically, I looked for other player seasons… which had enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title with a batting average at least as high as Revere’s but a walk rate and isolated slugging (slugging minus batting average) below his… In fact, since 1900 (it’s not worth going earlier because seasons were much shorter then), the only player with at least 400 plate appearances that had as high of a batting average with as little other hitting value is … Ben Revere. That’s it…

If you disregard his sub-par defense (especially compared to what you would expect from a guy with his speed), Revere really isn’t a terrible offensive player. If you took away all of his steals and instead turned that many singles into doubles, he’d have a slugging percentage around the league average. The problem is, a single followed by a steal isn’t as valuable as a double because it doesn’t advance runners on base, so his value would really be something less than that of a player with league-average slugging. Even if he posts a batting average way above the mean in any given season, he never walks or gets extra-base hits, so he has to sustain that mark against all kinds of luck and defensive factors in order to give the Phillies even passable offensive value. It’s a game that the Phillies seem interested in playing, and it’s defensible because of his obviously high average and stolen base totals, but I’m just not sure if they’re going to win that way.

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Tommy Thevenow of the 1933 Pirates hit .312 with an ISO a good bit lower than Revere's, and drew only three walks – albeit in only 262 plate appearances.

There are a number of other seasons with ISO and walk rate at least as bad as Revere's, some of them with terrible batting averages. I guess the BAs aren't relatively as empty, but they're like a smaller package that is just as empty :)

The NL hit .243 in 1968, of course, so I wondered if it was possibly an OK year for Alou despite that empty .263. Nope. He was at -9 RBat and an OPS+ of 78. Nor was it a matter of him having a niche as a pinch-hitter then, because that year he batted .222 in the role. He wouldn't become an elite pinch-hitter till several years later.

. My impression was that Revere is an above average center fielder with a weak arm. Overall a plus defender.

his fielding numbers on both BBREF and Fangraphs are pretty bad since joining the Phils... my impression is that Revere is just another data point in favor of the idea that Ruben Amaro is really bad at judging talent, the guys he lets go are better/have more left in the tank than the guys he extends, the guys he brings in are not as good as the players they are being brought in to replace

Jesus Alou flourished, as I noted, as a pinch hitter in his 30s: .272 career as a pinch hitter, .283 from 1971 on. He basically had two careers, one as a starter for reasons known best to nobody, and another as a pretty creditable role player. Over four-fifths of his many PAs came in his first "career."

The player with the most plate appearances and negative WAA is Bill Buckner, 10,037 and -17.4
close behind him is Doc Cramer, 9927 and -22.8

Cramer's BBEF comp list is interesting, he had 8.5 career WAR, his comps averaged 46.1
they all had a higher (raw) OPS than him, they all played in lower scoring run environments except for Lloyd Waner (so they all had a pretty hefty OPS+ advantage)

Fun with numbers...even if Trout can keep up his incredible pace, he'd still fall short of Hornsby's (barely) or Ruth's numbers with the same amount of PA. To get to 163 WAR, Trout would need over 12,700 PA -- more than 2,000 more than Ruth, and a number only 8 players in history have reached. If Trout managed to match Rose's 15,890 PA, he'd have 203 WAR...and pretty much every other record, too!

Tommy Thevenow has one of the weirdest careers ever. He had a couple of years as the Cardinal backup shortstop, but was given full-time play in 1926. He hit .256, with 2 homers and 15 doubles in 608 AB - and finished FOURTH in the MVP voting. Really. Everyone thought he had the hottest glove around. The Cardinals had picked up Rabbit Maranville, who was not finished, but just stashed him in the minors as an injury replacement or something. Well, in 1927, Thevenow was REALLY bad. Could not get his batting average over .200. The Cards turned to the 20-year-old Heinie Schuble, who was, if anything, worse than Thevenow. Maranville got a few games in there.

In 1928, the team hired Bill McKechnie as manager. Most of you know that McKechnie was the most successful ever of the absolutely glove-crazy managers. He looked at the young Thevenow. He looked at the young Schuble. He gave the starting job to Rabbit Maranville, who was in his 30s and hit .240, but whose glove wasn't a mirage. Thevenow got traded and then spent the next decade in the majors, playing very badly, but apparently able to convince people that his glove really was that hot, which it wasn't. He may have had the worst career of anyone who played a whole decade. I have no idea at all what his managers thought they were seeing, but I do know that I'll take McKechnie's opinion of a glove over just about anyone's. - Brock Hanke

Also re: #20. Babe Ruth does not have the fewest PA with a WAR of 130-160. He had 163 WAR, which is too many. So, who actually DOES have the fewest PA for 130-163 WAR? There can't be that many contenders, not at that level. - Brock again.

Just so I am clear with this, players who have high batting averages but do not walk or hit for power are not good (or are at least over-valued), no matter how many hits they accumulate-is that the accepted common wisdom? Players who do that and occupy a hitting position (corner infielder and corner outfielder) should be scorned even more.

Just so I am clear with this, players who have high batting averages but do not walk or hit for power are not good (or are at least over-valued), no matter how many hits they accumulate-is that the accepted common wisdom? Players who do that and occupy a hitting position (corner infielder and corner outfielder) should be scorned even more

At the risk of answering a rhetorical question, no, not at all. The common wisdom greatly values OBP, and OBP doesn't care how you reach base.

Just so I am clear with this, players who have high batting averages but do not walk or hit for power are not good (or are at least over-valued), no matter how many hits they accumulate-is that the accepted common wisdom? Players who do that and occupy a hitting position (corner infielder and corner outfielder) should be scorned even more.

As BDC notes (see, that saves you one coke right there), even if we leave aside defense and baserunning, this isn't strictly true. Well, it's difficult to assess whether "over-valued" holds.

We can summarize it this way -- it is hard to hit 300 and not be a useful player with the bat ... but it's near impossible to hit 330 and not be a useful player with the bat. (With a caveat on the late 20s and 30s when everybody hit 330) As also noted, OPS (or RC) doesn't particularly care what the "shape" of your slash line is, it's just what your OBP and SLG are. Fancier offensive measures will provide even greater reward to OBP.

Assuming that hitting 330 practically guarantees an OBP of at least 360 and a SLG of at least 400, then using the RC=OBP*SLG*PA formula, a guy hitting 330 is essentially guaranteed to produce at least .144 runs per PA. That would have been a bit below average in the 2001 AL, well above average at the moment.

Take a look at Alex Sanchez in 2004. He had a .322 BA in 352 PA, only walked 7 times and had a .386 SLG. He was 5.5 runs below average with the bat.

Or look at Wilton Guerrero in 2001. A .338 BA in 147 PA, only walked 3 times and had a .408 SLG. He was 1.5 runs below average with the bat.

An even crazier line is the one put up by Curt Davis in 1939. He had a .381 BA in 115 PA, walked only 3 times and had a ISO of .076. Despite the .381 BA in a league that averaged .272 his bat was worth just 3 runs above average. Though I think anyone would take that out of a pitcher.

Yes, you can achieve the "near impossible" if you walk once every 50 PA like Sanchez and Guerrero (and Revere).

In the expansion era, there have been 17 qualified seasons with a walk rate of 1 per 45 PA or worse -- assuming Revere hangs on. Of those, Revere actually leads with a 315 BA followed closely by Baerga 1994 (strike season and a big ISO) and Mickey Rivers 1976 at 312 (120 ISO). Rivers (14) and Baerga (12) lead the Rbat race, Dunston did it twice while being average (good ISO) and Revere is 5th with -1 Rbat so far. Outside of that top 5, all but one of the remaining was either a SS or a C. The worst among the guys who managed at least a 295 BA was Deivi Cruz at -6 Rbat although he showed decent power. (After Dunston's 296, the next highest BA is 284 so that's a real gap.)

Knock it down to 1 BB per 30 PA and you pick up more good BAs but still only 4 over 220 -- Puckett 1988 at 356, Rivers twice (333, 326) and Templeton 1977 at 322. Among the ones who hit at least 295 (now an arbitrary cutoff), Puckett 1984 was horrific (-16 with a 296/320/336 line and then the next worst is Fermin 1994 at -6.5 (bad for a strike year) then Cruz. Other than Puckett, Revere is the worst non SS-C. Still, out of the 29 seasons, 21 were average or better.

Of course selection bias -- if Alex Sanchez had produced more, he'd have gotten more playing time so my looking at qualified seasons is biased towards guys who did OK. So 250+ PA, 295+ BA, 30+ PA per BB ... 56 expansion seasons, 40 average or better, 45 within -1 run or better. Among the 12 who hit 320 or better, Sanchez is the only one below -1 run.

Probably have to nominate Ricky Jordan as the most embarrassing on the list. Playing mostly 1B/LF off the Phils 1992 bench, Jordan put up a line of 304/313/417. That still somehow comes out to 5 runs above average in 284 PA ... or about average for a 1B which just seems wrong (mathematically, aesthetically and morally).

One of my favorite stats that I was introduced to by Bill James back in the 1980s was secondary average (the sum of extra bases on hits, walks, and stolen bases expressed on a per-at-bat basis). James explains in the 1986 Abstract that it "could not be described as an analytical tool", and I understand that, but it always seemed to me to be a handy guide for determining which players were making offensive contributions that were not reflected in their batting average. It really helped me to understand the difference between the Rickey Hendersons and the Lloyd Waners of the world. Does anybody use secondary average any more? An example like Revere's would seem a perfect example to use it...

Amusingly, James just wrote an article for his pay site the other day focusing on secondary average, probably the first thing he's written about it in decades.

Secondary Average doesn’t resonate the way that it used to because people don’t take Batting Average so seriously anymore. When fans evaluated hitters primarily by their batting averages, Secondary Averages were a really useful concept. Since fans no longer rely on batting averages in the way they once did, Secondary Averages are less relevant, so whereas I used to write about this every year, I no longer do. The highest Secondary Average ever (400 or more plate appearances) was 1.088, by Barry Bonds in 2004, whereas the lowest ever was .034, by Mike Slattery in 1884. Bonds in that one season was the only player over 1.000, and the lowest since 1900 was .062, by Hal Lanier in 1968. Lanier, with 486 at bats, had 14 doubles, one triple, no homers, 12 walks and 2 stolen bases.

The steroid era kind of ruined the stat, Secondary Average, because phenomenal numbers became commonplace. Before 1990, if you had a .400 Secondary Average, that was terrific. In 1989 there were 11 major league regulars (400 or more PA) who had secondary averages of .400 or higher, led by Jack Clark at .521; Clark and Rickey Henderson were the dominant Secondary Average guys of that era. Then in 2000 you have 40 players over .400, led by Bonds at .648 and Giambi at .586. . ..Mark McGwire must have been hurt that year, because he was always in the .600-.700 range as well, sometimes higher. When you destroy the norms you destroy the stat. If there were 20 no-hitters in a season a no-hitter would lose its significance. If a player hits .400 in the next decade that will be a wonder, but if 20 players hit .400 in the next decade that would be a travesty. The steroid era made a travesty of the norms in Secondary Average.

He goes on to demonstrate that SA correlates well with runs scored/RBI.

It almost seems like it's true! He's 44th in the league in PAs. And you would never expect him to have so many baserunners if you just looked at his lineup. Yet he dominates this statistic year after year.

It almost seems like it's true! He's 44th in the league in PAs. And you would never expect him to have so many baserunners if you just looked at his lineup. Yet he dominates this statistic year after year.

Exactly. He's batting behind Revere (.333 OBP), Rollins (.318) and Utley (.349). That's not bad, considering there are so many sub .300 OBPs around the league, but it's hard to see how that results in league leading opportunities.

Somebody should check and make sure Phillie fans aren't sneaking onto the bases before Howard bats.

Clearly, Howard is making his teammates better. His ability to knock them in inspires them to get on base. What a leader!

Phillies are getting a .343 OBP from their leadoff men, 4th in the league, league is at .324, (Stl, Miami and Wash are 1,2,3)

Phillies are getting a .327 OBP from their leadoff men, 8th in the league, league is at .327, (La, Col & Cincy are 1,2,3)(Stl and Miami are 12 & 13, Wash is 5th at .334- but basically after 2 batters Stl's and Miami's OBP lead is gone)

phillies third place hitters are at .344 (league is .358)

What's going on? lineup spots 1-3 the Phillies have an OBP only about 2 points better than league 1-3, so how does Howard bat with more runners than anyone else?
1: The league is averaging 41 homers through slots 1-3, the Phillies have 10 (Why is that important? To see how may baserunners Howard has- homers from guys batting in front of him take runners OFF base before they reach Howard)
2: League 1,2,3 batter average 172 RBI, Phillie's 1,2,3 guys have driven in 142 (This overlaps with #1 obviously, 10 of the RBI difference is the RBI from 1,2,3 driving themselves in with a HR)
3: League 1:2:3 batters average 31 GDPs, Phillies have 20 (that gives Howard 11 extras runners on base)
4: League 1:2:3 batters average 16 CS, Phillies have 12 (that gives Howard 4 extras runners on base)

It's kind of funny but aside from OBP all the little things like that just happen to lineup in a direction that favors Howard batting with men on base, Phillies 1:2:3 batters have a little better OBP than average, they hit fewer HRs than average, drive in fewer runners than average, get caught stealing less than average and ground into fewer DPs than average.

Yeah. Mike Trout and Kole Calhoun are getting on base a lot more than the top Phillies hitters, but they have driven themselves in 42 times, not to mention the other hitters they take off the bases. So Pujols, despite playing more than Howard, does not have as many RBI opps. Albert batting 3rd instead of 4th also a factor there.